It seems the tremors in the southern portion of South Korea is really getting people rattled:

After a 4.5-magnitude aftershock hit the North Gyeongsang city of Gyeongju on Monday night in the same place as two large earthquakes only a week ago, residents are fleeing the region and making preparations for emergency flights.

“I cannot stay here anymore,” said Kim Ok-sun, a 67-year-old resident of Gyeongju. “I am going to my son’s house in Jecheon, North Chungcheong, where I will be far from all these tremors.”

Kim’s house is close to the epicenter of the 4.5-magnitude aftershock that came at 8:33 p.m. on Monday, according to the Korea Meteorological Administration, and only a few kilometers from the epicenter of the 5.8-magnitude earthquake of Sept. 12, the largest Korea has seen since 1978. There were no deaths, though 48 people were injured.

Since then, residents in Gyeongju have felt some 400 aftershocks. After the Monday aftershock, around 25 people additionally reported injuries, mostly from falling down as they fled their homes.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

#Japanese delegation work on table-top exercise as part of ROK-Japan-US security cooperation dialogue on Maui pic.twitter.com/zBMSEvblDQ

— Pacific Forum CSIS (@PacificForum) September 19, 2016

This photo, released by North Korea’s state-run Internet propaganda site Meari on Sept. 19, 2016, shows a poster bearing an image of a mother holding a baby with the phrase “For the future, let’s stop smoking flat.” (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)

This is pretty significant because with the Japanese participating in training patrols in the South China Sea it may encourage other countries to do so as well which would only further erode Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea:

China is “disappointed to the point of despair” with Japan’s conduct in the South China Sea, it said Monday, after Tokyo announced it may set up training patrols with the US in the contested region.

China asserts sovereignty over almost all of the strategically vital waters in the face of rival claims from its Southeast Asian neighbours, and has rapidly turned reefs in the area into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes.

In a speech last week Japanese defence minister Tomomi Inada called China’s actions a “deliberate attempt to unilaterally change the status quo, achieve a fait accompli, and undermine the prevailing norms”, according to a transcript released by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Inada said Japan would increase its engagement in the South China Sea through joint training cruises with the US Navy, exercises with regional navies and capacity-building assistance to coastal nations.  [AFP]

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see what the ROK will do if more countries come forward to conduct these training patrols in the SCS.

If you ever thought there was a lot of Kims, Parks and Lees in Korea you would be right:

“If you throw a stone from a hill in Seoul, chances are fifty-fifty that it would hit a Kim, Lee or Park.” So goes a Korean joke showing how common the three surnames are.

A recent census has reaffirmed this _ one in every five Koreans living within the country has the family name of Kim, according to a recent population and housing survey by Statistics Korea.

The number of people with Kim as their surname totaled 10.69 million or 21.5 percent of the total population of 51.07 million.

Coming in second and third on the list of most common surnames are Lee or Yi (14.7 percent) and Park (8.4 percent).

Following the big-three were Choe or Choi (4.7 percent), Chung (4.3 percent), Kang (2.4 percent), Cho (2.1 percent), Yun or Yoon (2.1 percent), Chang (2.0 percent) and Lim or Im (1.7 percent). [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, which includes an interesting discussions about the origins of these three names.

North Korea bans sarcasm. Really. https://t.co/pAv2bhx55T

— Jieun Baek (@JieunBaek1) September 16, 2016

People wait to leave Seoul Station in downtown Seoul on Sept. 17, 2016 as the Chuseok holiday draws to a close. Chuseok, the Korean thanksgiving which fell on Sept. 15 this year, is the season for family reunions, with Koreans traditionally offering a ritual feast to their ancestors. [Yonhap]

Here is another story of someone from China committing a crime against a Korean national on Jeju:

A Chinese man suspected of attacking an elderly woman with a lethal weapon at a Catholic church in Jeju was arrested on Saturday, police said.

The 50-year-old man, whose identity was withheld by police, was hiding at an unidentified place in Seoguipo on the southern resort island of Jeju when police nabbed him, the Jeju Seobu Police Station said. The place is some 40 kilometers away from the scene of the incident.

He has since been under probe on attempted murder charges, they added.

The Chinese man fled the scene after stabbing the chest and abdomen of a 61-year-old Korean woman who was praying inside a Catholic church in Jeju alone at about 8:45 a.m., the police said. The type of weapon used was not specified.

The woman, identified only by her surname Kim, was in critical condition.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but I can’t help but think how much different the media reaction would be in South Korea if a USFK servicemember walked into a church and tried to murder someone like this.

If you are going to commit illegal prostitution in the US, having your massage parlor named “The Texas Doll House” and having a manager named “Kum Shugars” is probably not the best cover:

Fifteen women were arrested and eight brothels were shut down last month in northwest Dallas as part of a sex-trafficking investigation, authorities say.

The women, all of whom were owners or managers of massage parlors in northwest Dallas, were arrested in stings Aug. 26. Most of the women were booked into the Dallas County Jail on charges of aggravated promotion of prostitution, a third-degree felony.

The charge carries a minimum of two to 10 years in prison if convicted, and a fine of up to $10,000.

Two of the arrested women, Connie Su Moser and Kum Shugars, are charged with using a facility of interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise for using cellphones and the internet to promote prostitution at Dallas Doll House, according to the North Texas Trafficking Task Force. Moser, the owner of Dallas Doll House, also faces one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.  [Dallas News via reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but for those who are wondering; Ms. Kum Shugars must have been doing a good job running the place since it had positive reviews:

Services rendered, according to the anonymous reviewers, are indistinguishable from what one might expect at a brothel that wasn’t pretending to be something else.

CBJs (oral sex with a condom), CFS (vaginal sex with a condom) and DATY (oral sex performed by the client on the Doll House employee) are all mentioned multiple times, along with physical descriptions of the women providing the services.

“It’s a classic AMP [Asian massage parlor],” user Bill M says. “Decent looking girls there the time I went about 2 months ago.”  [Dallas Observer]

The owner of the massage parlor Connie Sue Moser appears to have been doing quite well for herself with her whole in the wall massage parlor business:

Moser, the owner of the Doll House, was arrested at her Lewisville home. Shugars, a manager at the parlor, was arrested at Dallas Doll House. Both were charged with use of a facility of interstate commerce in aid of a racketeering enterprise.

The task force also seized roughly $420,000 from Moser’s home, $70,000 from her bank accounts and her 2015 Lexus.  [WFAA]

You can read more at all of the above links.

It will be interesting to see how much jail time this guy gets for his illegal organ transplant scheme:

The person responsible for 87 illegal organs transplant cases was arrested by the police, putting an end to eight years of hiding in China.
During that time, South Korean patients were supplied organs from deceased Chinese, some of whom were victims of accidents or executed convicts.

The Busan Metropolitan Police reported Monday the suspect, identified by his surname Kim, was arrested and charged with brokering an illegal organs trade with his Chinese partners in China.

Kim, 43, arranged a total of 87 illegal organ transplant surgeries between June 2006 and February 2011 by opening an online community site, which he advertised as a community forum for patients in need of organs transplant. By luring potential clients who were ailing from illnesses such as chronic renal insufficiency and liver cancer to his online site, Kim was found to have brokered illegal transplant surgeries worth around 6 billion won ($5.3 million) in total.

Kim pocketed 600 million won, the police discovered.

The police said Kim led the illegal campaign by arraigning schedules and locations for surgeries. In most cases, organs came from Chinese convicts just executed on death row or Chinese people killed in accidents. Among the 87 cases, six involved organs from live donors. Details as to how the suspect kept in touch with his associates in China were not disclosed.

The police added Kim had stayed in China since 2008 as an illegal alien and avoided arrest. After eight years of living in self-imposed exile, Kim, possibly exhausted from years of laying low, contacted police in South Korea in June and expressed his intention to turn himself in. He was arrested upon his arrival last month at Gimpo International Airport.   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.